2009 - Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin 2009

One of rock and roll’s most passionate and influential artists, Janis Joplin is the honoree for the 14th annual American Music Masters® series.

Janis Joplin has passed into the realm of a legend: an outwardly brash yet inwardly vulnerable and troubled personality who possessed one of the most passionate voices in rock history. Her legacy now reaches beyond her music to include her persona as the embodiment of freedom. Music journalist Ellen Willis asserted that “Joplin belonged to that select group of pop figures who mattered as much for themselves as for their music. Among American rock performers, she was second only to Bob Dylan in importance as a creator-recorder-embodiment of her generation’s mythology. She was also the only woman to achieve that kind of stature in what was basically a male club, the only ‘60s culture hero to make visible and public, women’s experience of the quest for liberation, which was very different from men’s.”